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Soup

Cream-of-Tomato Soup

A tomato soup thickened with flour and butter, seasoned with salt, baking soda, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,283 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream-of-Tomato Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Stew the tomatoes slowly for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

  2. Strain the tomatoes and add baking soda while hot.

Make the soup

  1. Make a white sauce with the flour and butter, then add the tomato juice.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Tomato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Tomato + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 124,287 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the main flavor, acidity and liquid base of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps form the white sauce.
Milk
Creates the creamy body and mild sweetness of the soup.
Baking soda
Neutralizes some of the tomatoes' acidity, softening their tartness.

The step that matters

Adding the tomato juice to the white sauce. Tomatoes are acidic, and acid can make milk proteins curdle or separate when heated. Baking soda, added earlier, neutralizes some of that acid, and gentle heat helps keep the sauce smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, flour, butter, milk):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Jalapenobetter flavor fit
  3. Capersbetter flavor fit
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, flour, butter, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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